


the relation between Light and Void

by Schnikeys_Discuss (Schnikeys)



Series: Clockie's Meta [18]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Analysis, Archived from radioactivesupersonic Blog, Character Analysis, Gen, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:14:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27058549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schnikeys/pseuds/Schnikeys_Discuss
Summary: "...So, perhaps, if Higher Beings can be thought of like stars, then, the heat and pressure that forges that star is by hitting a critical mass of essence."
Series: Clockie's Meta [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974223
Kudos: 11





	the relation between Light and Void

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ClockworkRainbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkRainbow/gifts).



Anonymous asked: What do you think is the relation between Light and Void? They are opposites in many ways, like how Ghost can gain Essence only from ghosts, and Soul energy only from living enemies. But both energies still seem tied to what I'd call 'spirit', because essence affects dreams, while soul is self-explanatory. They seem like complementary powers that have similar effects when overflowing, like you see with Godmaster DLC endings compared to the Infection.

* * *

So this might seem like a rabbit trail, but, roughly, here’s my thinking.

What _Hollow Knight_ tells us that _Silksong_ ’s basic premise confirms is that there are two mutually true statements:

  * Hallownest is surrounded by wastelands  
  

  * Contrary to the Pale King’s words in the Howling Cliffs, there are other kingdoms beyond these wastelands



This intrigues me because it’s fair to presume Pharloom has other gods to its name, or at least had at one point, which IMO, would seem to suggest they still have gods. We have yet to see a dead god that truly leaves behind no lingering seed of their presence. Unn is absent according to the tablet her children leave behind but she still has a physical body; she is a weak god, not a dead one. Radiance, when killed in the Dream No More and Embrace the Void endings, dissolves into Essence. And Grimm and Radiance can be refought after their boss fights that ostensibly kill them, even if it’s in a dream. The Pale King is dead- his corpse can be found- but the Seer, who isn’t proven inaccurate about anything else she says- cheerfully wonders if he’s watching Ghost.

Even, seemingly, the “Blackwyrm” Ogrim alludes to- there is some manner of enormous, jet black creature with blue eyes that can be seen in both Godhome and the lifeblood abyss dream. 

Let’s assume for a moment that Pharloom is also going to be surrounded by the wastes. Let’s assume- since we have no reason not to- that Hallownest is standard; a kingdom containing all manner of flora and fauna, surrounded by an empty, nearly-lifeless no man’s land. After all, assuming the Pale King is the author of the whispering lore tablets, since they speak in his voice and the author states indirectly they are a Higher Being (”your great strength marks you among _us_ ”), we know he traversed the void himself before arriving at the edge of the kingdom to leave behind his Wyrm body. And he claims “there is no world beyond”. It would suggest even if he’s wrong (many other bugs, from Quirrel to Cloth to Zote to Cornifer, suggest or outright state the existence of other kingdoms that they’ve traveled to) he views the world as empty.

This would seem to suggest that life exists by clinging to specific habitable zones created by gods. Possibly, Grimm’s adherents, being oddballs, occupy a travelling bubble of life and safety created by his power- it would explain why, when dream nailed, the two giraffe weevils resting outside his tent are thinking about how the roads are dark and cold, but their master is always guiding them.

That said, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Light and Life are synonymous. While many beings allude to the Void as death, that’s not the full picture. Lifeblood- the substance most directly conflated with “life”, appears to be abyssal in origin. There are artificial void beings- the Kingmoulds and Wingmoulds, among them- and _natural_ ones as well. The snail shamans appear to have been long ago born from the void itself- the shamans you free from the Crystallized Mound and the Soul Sanctum both dissolve into shadow just like the Collector. And what’s more interesting is that Lemm’s remark on the description of the Void Idol tells us that there were bugs that worshiped the void.

Void does not appear by its nature antithetical to light. In fact, the truth seems to be more interesting- void appears primed to devour light when the two come into contact. It seems to take a lot of light and a weakened void for the former to triumph- see the Broken and Pure vessels. And at their pinnacle, Pure wields the power of holy light, effectively and without hurting themselves.

Roughly, what I think is going on is that Light is roughly the energy of a god; they are beings made of Light, who radiate it, like living suns. This is worth noting, because at least Hallownest as we saw it does not appear to have any natural sunlight- outdoor regions are perpetually overcast and dim, and the majority of the kingdom is underground. All light comes from either artificial lighting or a natural glow that seems to pervade certain areas.

The gods radiate light, and, in that light, life flourishes. In the sense of Essence, that’s described as “fragments of light that dreams are made of” but several sources, most noticeably the cut full text of the Elegy for Hallownest, suggest that dreams are not exclusively a gift of the gods. Seemingly, all living beings have dreams.

And most interestingly? That’s not just the light-aligned beings. Kin, when purified of the Radiance, with their spirit freed after the Lost Kin fight, _still has essence to give Ghost_. The Collector can be dream nailed and read. Ghost’s ascension to the Shade Lord basically predicates on their ability to enter dreams, and on having the awakened pure nail.

This is _really_ interesting if you consider Ghost becoming the Shade Lord seems to involve aggregating a _lot_ of essence to them. And many of the Warrior Dreams, after their defeat, talk about entrusting themselves to Ghost, watching them or coming with them or being taken somewhere by them. The Seer also remarks that “the dreams of this kingdom are starting to stick to you.”

The Elegy for Hallownest also implies both the Pale King and the Pure Vessel took the Kingdom’s dreams onto themselves.

So, perhaps, if Higher Beings can be thought of like stars, then, the heat and pressure that forges that star is by hitting a critical mass of essence. It would explain what gods get out of this symbiosis with “Lower” forms of life- to retain their power, to not fade away and gradually diminish, they need to retain believers, who will continue dreaming the dreams that sustain them. Radiance parasitically forces herself into others’ dreams by creeping through the minds of those who already knew of her, and then as her strength regained she was able to attack the minds of others- helped that she was the god matriarch of the moths, who specialized in manipulation of dreams.

So where does this leave Void? I think that Void is simply another god’s light- albeit a particularly eldritch light, coming from the oldest god we know of.

The relics from before Hallownest’s history are all void-aligned. The Pale King and White Lady usurped the Radiance to become Hallownest’s new gods, and seemingly pushed aside Unn to do so… but it’s likely that Radiance overthrew another god- because she greets Ghost as “ANCIENT ENEMY”.

I think the Blackwyrm was the first god of Hallownest, and its stamp yet remains on the kingdom- most directly, in the form of the void totems, arcane eggs, the snails and Collector, the lifeblood cocoons, and of course, the black sea at the bottom of the kingdom, but I would expect, before Radiance’s rule drained the water away, it’s likely that sea was _much higher_ than the Abyss.

What makes me say that? Well, Hallownest loves shells, doesn’t it? And the most common kind of shell that appears, all over the place, as high as the Forgotten Crossroads, in-game?

Ammonite shells.

Ancient sea creatures.

Flowing water would likely have bored out the expansive network of natural caverns the kingdom takes place in. And, again, the Snails would appear to be the descendants of natural void creatures. There’s certainly no ‘fetter’ on them like the Pale King imposed on the Moulds and Vessels. There are land snails. There are also sea snails.

The Abyss is heavily conflated with the distant past and this notion of primal life. The Hunter’s Journal entry for the Void Tendrils has the Hunter outright talking about how the bugs of Hallownest wondered what predated them- that the Hunter is wondering about this _here_ would heavily suggest that the primal life of the void _is_ that ancestor.

The Radiance went to war with the Blackwyrm, but, it’s likely the Pale King never did. The White Defender’s journal entry has Ogrim reference only a single “battle of the Blackwyrm”. That’s not a war. And the Pale King is _way_ more willing to stick his face and hands (and children) in the void looking for a leg up on the Radiance.

This could well be a kind of generational ignorance acting here. The King came after Radiance had ruled for long enough to establish the moth tribe, and for the moths to get quite entrenched- if the Resting Grounds are only what was left of the tribe after a long decline, that’s still a rather fancy area with a lot of personalized tombs and markers. So he’d have arrived long after the Blackwyrm’s first defeat. And even the Snail Shaman doesn’t allude to the Blackwyrm- people who mention the idea of life in the Abyss mention it in words of idle curiosity and speculation. If we presume Lifeblood is tied to the Abyss, and tied to the Blackwyrm, as the creature in the background of the Lifeblood Dream and that door in the abyss would certainly seem to imply, then the closest thing the Blackwyrm has to an extant worshiper is Joni the heretic, and implicitly some others given Salubra cheerfully mentions drinking lifeblood is kind of a taboo, which, you don’t establish taboos for something that nobody is even considering doing.

Blackwyrm is a forgotten god- so faded and distant that they’re only peeking around the corners through dreams. It might well be that by the time the Pale King encountered the void, he viewed it as something without sapience entirely. After all, he perceives the Vessels as “mindless” when you could make a two-hundred point bulleted list over things that Ghost canonically does, either actively in cutscenes or implicitly in the thrust and limiters of the game, that make no sense if they’re a mindless puppet operating only on the instructions they’re given. Like, for example, sitting with Quirrel or Marissa, or walking slower in some sections than others.

The implication is the Pale King viewed void as something mindless and godless, but it was neither.

And the _interesting_ takeaway from that? Is the idea that the Pale King may have given the Radiance’s ancient enemy an open door without even meaning to. After all, Bardoon outright says- death to a Wyrm usually means _transformation_. So perhaps in creating the Vessels, the Pale King was actually just imposing fetters on fragments of the Blackwyrm- and with the Godmaster endings, Ghost was the one to shatter that fetter and ascend to the emptied throne of the God of the Void- the new incarnation of the Blackwyrm.

**Author's Note:**

> Analysis originally found here: <https://radioactivesupersonic.tumblr.com/post/183642302045/what-do-you-think-is-the-relation-between-light>


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